It was a fantastic evening at Trout Lake for the Great Bear Rainforest fundraiser last night. All day musicians, dancers, artists, activists, body-workers, permaculturists held workshops and performances throughout East Vancouver to raise money to protect a very sacred and rare piece of untouched wilderness. The Great Bear Rainforest is incredibly diverse and home to the Spirit Bear, which is technically a Brown Bear but for some reason the population of these bears in this area turned white. More than any of the many ecosystems that would be adversely affected by the proposed Enbridge Pipeline, this rainforest would be irreversibly ruined by this short-term ecologically disastrous greed-based plan of the Harper government. This pipeline would stretch from the controversial Alberta tar sands all the way to the coast at Kitimat. This would open up an until now untouched and often tricky waterway to supertankers… Craziness! We raised funds yesterday for Pacific Wild, one of the major organizations working to protect this important habitat and with native groups from the area. The outcry against this madness is growing and it will be resisted with dignity and steadfast commitment to ecological and indigenous justice. So we celebrated this resistance and this beautiful piece of heaven on earth with music and dance until the wee hours of the morning, the best and most sustainable way of countering a twisted system :)